This disclosure relates generally to online content delivery, in particular, to generating an audience for online content by weighted lookalike expansion of a specified custom-generated audience using weights for members of the custom-generated audience.
Online systems have become increasingly prevalent in digital content distribution and consumption and allow users to more easily communicate with one another. Users of an online system associate with other online system users, forming a web of connections. Additionally, users may share personal information and other stories with other users connected to them via an online system. Examples of information shared by online system users include videos, music, contact information, background information, job information, interests, photos, notes, and/or other member-specific data.
An online system stores videos and other types of media files, such as audio files, pictures, documents, etc., for presenting to users of the online system. These media files can be created by the online system, uploaded by online system users, or received from third parties. Online system users may interact with media files presented to them in various ways. For example, an online system user may play, express preference, comment on, share, hide or leave videos presented to them. An online system user can also decide what media files to share with other users connected to the user at the online system.
In many cases, for both sponsored and non-sponsored (i.e., organic) content, content providers who upload content to the online system for sharing with others may define the audience for that content. The audience definition may be a hard filter that defines which users are eligible to view the content, or it may simply indicate to the online system which users are preferred (e.g., so that the online system may target those users with suggestions to view the content). For example, an owner of a brand that has a presence on the online system may upload a video about the brand and further define as an audience for that video any users who have interacted with the brand in the online system. Then, the online system selects users to whom to deliver that video using, at least in part, that audience definition to determine which users are eligible to be presented with the video. Other common ways to define a target audience include demographic information about users, location or other contextual information about users, and information about users' social connections.
Precise targeting of a well-defined audience is increasingly important as the competition for users' attention online increases. Each day the amount of online content grows, which makes delivering content to users for whom the content was not intended even more wasteful of users' time, limited screen space, and computing resources. But despite the many existing ways to define an audience for content, there is a need for improved methods to enable content providers to deliver content to their desired users more precisely while avoiding including users in the audience who are less valuable to the content providers.